Something I've wondered about...

On the Imaging: Unfortunetly, EMIR is not sensitive enough for this application.

However...

About a year ago in Shanghai at the world conference on non-destructive testing, someone put forward a way to rapidly image the electromagnetic fields of a conductive substance, to a few milimeters below it's surface. Since, if I followed thier paper correctly, this does not require the material to a single physical peice, and there appears to be no real limit to the size beyond resistance, the possibility of using large amounds of aluminum dust as a medium to monitor and map the entire floor of a room for changes in the electro magnetic field in real time occured to me, since an EM anomaly passing through the material would produce a measurable alteration in the EM feild of the dust.

The problem of course, with this idea is that you'd have to wrap the entire building in an airtight plastic, which would reduce the draft issue. I've discussed the idea with some building contractors and I'm told that there is a commercial plastic that is produced for this purpose.

The problem with 'going ahead' with this is the not insignificant price tag. On the whole to set up em imaging + cost of enough thermal and video cameras to cover all rooms + plastic + buying the property (since I doubt a landlord would be too happy sealing a building for a year) and we're allready on the far side of 1.5m dollars US.

So If I ever win the lottery, you'll be hearing the results of the expariment... otherwise...

About a year ago in Shanghai at the world conference on non-destructive testing, someone put forward a way to rapidly image the electromagnetic fields of a conductive substance, to a few milimeters below it's surface. Since, if I followed thier paper correctly, this does not require the material to a single physical peice, and there appears to be no real limit to the size beyond resistance, the possibility of using large amounds of aluminum dust as a medium to monitor and map the entire floor of a room for changes in the electro magnetic field in real time occured to me, since an EM anomaly passing through the material would produce a measurable alteration in the EM feild of the dust.

Do you have a link on this technology, please?

Quote:

The problem with 'going ahead' with this is the not insignificant price tag. On the whole to set up em imaging + cost of enough thermal and video cameras to cover all rooms + plastic + buying the property (since I doubt a landlord would be too happy sealing a building for a year) and we're allready on the far side of 1.5m dollars US.

This seems ot be the latest version. I admit, Em scanning is not my field, and they seem to be leaning toward a small, hand held unit that can be manually moved over the metal surface to detect flaws, but I belive that another application of this technology might be a large version that covers an entire area. Though reading this new information, I might have to go from aluminum dust to aluminum foil.

This seems ot be the latest version. I admit, Em scanning is not my field, and they seem to be leaning toward a small, hand held unit that can be manually moved over the metal surface to detect flaws, but I belive that another application of this technology might be a large version that covers an entire area. Though reading this new information, I might have to go from aluminum dust to aluminum foil.

I'm not clear about what you are trying to find with such scanning equipment. Are you looking for object movement? If so, your video cameras would pick that up.

Using these scanners would soak the entire area in strong magnetic fields permanently. This would change the environment completely, completely swamping any potential EIFs for instance. For all we know it might even disrupt or stop any paranormal haunting activity. Wouldn't it make more sense to measure the electromagnetic environment in situ rather than disrupt it so completely?

The problem is that using current technology there's no way to create accurate, real time EMI of such low power fields unless you have a spare very large array that Nasa can set up on site.

What I'm looking for is mobile, persistant anomalies in the EM field in the house. If I understand this paper right, in theory something like that would cause the image that it takes to change. Since most other reliable portable EMI technologies require fairly strong fields to make images, or are not in real time, this would have the appearance of a possible viable alternative.

In practice, I belive that you could reduce the power of the field this generates significantly. This application they're using it to look for subsurface anomalies in thick metal, whereas what I would be looking for would be the field distorting under another EM fields influence.

You say you're looking for persistent mobile EM anomalies. However, this probe appears to work by inducing eddy currents in conducting objects. So it looks at the magnetic fields induced by those eddy currents and maps any distortions caused by flaws in the material.

If there was a magnetic anomaly between the probe and a metallic surface, I guess it might show up as 'something' on the display. However, since the equipment is trying to image flaws in the metal, I doubt it would show what the anomaly itself looked like. And any actual flaws in the metal would further confuse the picture.

You could deduce as much information - that there is a magnetic anomaly present - just using a couple of magnetometers. What is more, the magnetometers would give you figures for the anomaly because you could compare it with the permanent ambient field in the room. You wouldn't get a picture, of course.

An ideal set up, in my view, would be a regular array of magnetometers all being monitored continuously. It should be possible to turn their readings into a model of the field lines with some not particularly complicated maths. This could be done with software to generate a 3-D view. It's possible that someone has already written the relevant software, or the individual bits of it.

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